On the fourth of January, 22 years have passed since the death of the inimitable of Helena Růžičková († 67). The popular Czech actress died in 2004, while the last two years of her life she fought not only with cancer, but also with other health problems. She outlived her son Jiří by less than 5 years and her husband by only a few months, well since according to she did not write a will, the property went to her granddaughters, with whom she did not have a close relationship.
Even before her departure, she was planning a wedding with her longtime friend Václav Glazar († 65). In an interview for the daily Právo, he once confirmed that he was with Helena they originally wanted to get married on January 3, but when the news spread in the press, they postponed the date to March 21 and the wedding was to be held abroad. But fate intervened faster. On the day the ceremony was to take place, she fell into a coma and later died.
Růžičková by this one wedding she planned to disinherit her two granddaughters Kamila and Lucia. They did not communicate with her for years, they never visited their father in the hospital and did not even come to his funeral. She just couldn’t forgive them for that and was considering preparing a will in which she wouldn’t bequeath them anything.
The iconic actress was left with an inheritance of several million, and the girls received a cottage in Slatina, a used Škoda and royalties, thanks to which they earn thousands of euros every year. In addition, they also receive royalties for her latest book. Růžičková owns her property she guarded very well, as evidenced by the fact that later they also found luxury jewelry under the floor in the kitchen.
Glazar did not like how they handled her things after her death. “She trampled on all the relics left by Helena! She threw away her things, clothes, photos… I don’t have to love someone, have feelings for them, that happens too! But when a million-dollar inheritance falls into my lap, I at least try to behave properly!” he whispered.
Helena’s daughter-in-law even gave her dogs away, but the last straw was when Jiří Sr.’s ashes, which were kept in a memorial in the garden of the cottage, were picked up and sent to be scattered at the Vinohradský cemetery. “I don’t want a cemetery here. That’s where the dead belong,” she declared. Jirko’s ex-wife allegedly did not like the actress because no woman was good enough for her beloved son. In addition, she complained that her mother-in-law interfered in the upbringing of her first daughter.
Růžičková was born Helena Málková on June 13, 1936 in Prague, Czech Republic. She was predicted by an African shaman to her father, a legionnaire in Africa, that she would become an artist. She’s been like that since she was a child she was preparing for an acting career. She attended a private ballet school and danced in the ballet of the Czech National Theater in Prague and in the then German Theater in Prague.
She later graduated from the Higher Medical School and briefly worked as a dental laboratory assistant. However, she continued to dream of a career on stage and the silver screen. She worked as a choreographer in Mladá Boleslav and was also a stage technician in Příbram.
Later, as a freelance actress, she was a guest at the Drama Club in Gogoľov Revízor (1967) and in the years 1971–1973 she was a member of Prague’s Theater Na zábradlí. In 1955, she married theater actor and assistant director Jiří Růžička Sr., with whom she lived until his death in 2003.
She had to resign from her career as a ballerina after gaining a lot of weight, but she was able to make her corpulent figure one of the basic attributes of her brilliant acting, especially in comedic roles. Helena Růžičková has loved movies since she was a child. As a four-year-old, she starred in the film Grandma (1940) and shortly after that in the comedy Z českéch mlýnů (1941).
She was permanently etched in the memory of the audience with her performances in cult films Hogo fogo Homolka, Homolka and Podolka, How about some spinach, Lord, you’re a widow!, Women in the offside, We’ll spin it tomorrow, dear…! or She tore violets with dynamite. Her character Škopkova from the trilogy directed by Zdenek Troška Slunce, seno, … remains unforgettable. She also acted in well-known fairy tales such as John the Little King, Three Nuts for Cinderella or About Princess Jasněnka and the Flying Shoemaker.
The cast actress wrote several books – cookbooks, autobiographies and a book about her optimistic struggle with an insidious disease. She was interested in several esoteric disciplines and it was publicly known that she had a gift of divination, for which she was even sought after by her acting colleagues. She predicted the future for free according to the motto “gifts should only be given again”.
In 1991, she became a co-founder of the Slon Foundation to help children from the orphanage in Šarišské Michaľany in eastern Slovakia. She suffered from cancer in the last years of her life, she began to give up her fight after the death of her husband and son Jiří Růžička Jr. (1999), who was also an actor.
